Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
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On entering the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, turn left and you will soon enter the Ancient Greek and Roman rooms. They are filled with works of art which depict the human form in almost unimaginable states of perfection. Most are adolescents and young adults, at the height of their strength and agility and good health. I am always tempted to think, how much better they look than I and most of the people I know do. It must have been a true golden age! And then I reflect on the actuality of their time: A third to a half of all children died as infants. How many surviving freeborn boys died in war or from war wounds or the diseases that follow conflict? How many were worked to an early death if they were not born free? How many women, free or enslaved, died in childbirth? How many of those who escaped those fates were struck with illnesses for which there was no cure? It was a world in which that statuesque perfection was attainable by very few, and those few for only a brief shining moment before age and infirmity arrived for them.
The great beauty
of ancient art did not represent the actuality of its age, but rather, reflects
a perfection they believed existed in the realm of the divine and the hope that
some few of us might achieve, if ever so briefly, some reflection of the divine. So put aside those of us who don’t or
can’t. Concentrate on the winners. Their view of reality was one of a deeply
imperfect creation for the most part cursed in one way or another with the gods
in their perfection looking down on our struggles, toying with us, laughing at
us, waiting for us to give them something in the often vain hope that we might
escape the disaster waiting for us just around the next corner. That we might escape our usual, all too
usual, reality. So, we hold up to
ourselves images of perfection to attract ourselves to what might be humanly
possible. But in fact, because so few ever approached that perfection, and so
many more, most in fact, were left unnoticed by the wayside, that beauty is
heart breaking.
We may look on
this and think how much better we are than they were. After all, we have made great strides in
childbirth practices, in medicine, in working toward human equality. And that is true. Perhaps not so much progress in avoiding
war. But is it not also true that we
still hope for a perfection, of looks and beauty, of charm and popularity, of
professional success, of financial well-being, and celebrate it when we think
we see it? What else is celebrity
culture? What else is our endless
sacrifice of effort and money on the many altars of self-improvement, of ladder
climbing? If we have success, how do we
feel about those left behind, those who cannot climb much higher? How do we feel if we ourselves, despite our
best efforts, are not quite beautiful, not very popular or successful, not
rich? If in fact we are quite
ordinary? Or worse? Is there perhaps something a little off about
these hopes in the face of our realities?
The uncomfortable truth is that the world we live in is imperfect. The idea that we might achieve statuesque perfection and all it represents is almost always a false hope. Fortunately, some few do briefly achieve it. It is in itself a good thing to strive after health, beauty, strength, agility and prosperity. But if we place our hope in achieving those good things and judge ourselves and others as deficient when we don’t get them, we ignore and devalue the life we actually have.
The truth is that
God actually seems to love our human world in its imperfections and failures as
much as in its apparent successes. God
seems to love us just as we really are.
We can be improved, and that is good, but all of us are already and
always loved. The dying infant and the dying mother. Exploited, underfed and overworked people,
free and unfree alike. Young men and
women injured and dying in the battles of war and childbirth. Unhealable injuries, untreatable
diseases. The injustices of human
systems of every kind. Our worth is not
just in success, but in living good values in our lives, in loving each other
as God loves us, and in putting that
love to work in the real world we live in.
Everyone alive is living in God’s love.
And if, God be praised, we do achieve some success, the ancients were
right: it is a gift from God. But that
success is not our own as a possession: it is ours to share.
Perhaps someone now is thinking, hasn’t he
moved from the particular blessings Jesus pointed out? I confess it: I believe Jesus is giving us a
representative sample of people who are blessed, a sample which can be
enlarged, not an exclusive list. His
point is that a life lived with humility, mercy and honest trust and hope but
still resulting in what the world thinks is a disastrous failure - that life is
in fact loved by God and can look forward to God’s enduring love at the final
judgment.
And so, consider the Beatitudes. “Blessed are” translates the Greek “makarioi hoi”. Makarios means not just blessed in the religious sense, but fortunate, lucky, winners. And who are these winners in the celestial lottery? Humble people. People who have lost someone or something. People who don’t put themselves forward in life. People who want right and good and justice. People who when they have the opportunity to take revenge, don’t. People who put God first and themselves last in their lives. People who stop fights, refuse violence, find ways to bring people together. People who are willing to suffer when doing the right thing brings them harm. People who are willing to be publicly identified with these values, with God’s values, and to be disrespected, and even harmed, for doing God’s work.
Jesus is telling
us what God’s values are. They are not
the values which “the world” thinks will get us ahead in life. In our imperfect world, what we used to call
a fallen world, humility, loss, deference, putting right ahead of
self-advancement, letting people off the hook, valuing peace over victory,
willingness to “take it”, are not values which will guarantee us success in the
cutthroat business of self-advancement.
They just don’t. And they
won’t. That’s an uncomfortable
truth. Choosing God’s way is really
risky. It’s not a really good career
move.
But what it is, is
an alignment with reality. Jesus is
telling us what God’s values are - that every life is of value, every life is
loveable, the lives of the world’s losers just as much as its winners. Jesus is recommending that we rearrange our
perception of things. That we organize
our social interactions so that God’s values will be held up, learned and
practiced as diligently as are the arts of self-advancement. That we redefine what human success is and
can be. That we create human
communities in which God’s love is the standard of our own values. But how to do that? How to even start? Three suggestions.
First: Bird
watchers study the appearance, the calls, the habitats, the flight patterns of
the birds they want to identify. They
quietly wait for one to appear and then they just watch, learning about the
bird. Perhaps we can do the same with
virtue. Is there someone living this
beatitude life? Quietly watch and learn. But they’re not birds - they and we are both
human. Watch and learn and then do it
ourselves.
Second: Don’t be
too surprised to learn that we too are eligible to be loved.
Third: Are we
willing to admit that the talents and successes we might enjoy are gifts from
God, to be shared?
In other words, are we willing to see our weaknesses, our utter ordinariness, our failures, not as sources for depression but opportunities for God’s love to seek us out and find us? Are we willing to seek out and find others who need this love of God?
Be blessed. Be happy. Be lucky. Be loved.
